Our children must keep pace with the new global elite

Wednesday 22 June 2011 10:53 BST

Streets ahead: an English lesson in Hong Kong. The youngsters of the East are outstripping ours

David Cameron believes that he is spending the political capital he earned from victory in the AV referendum on resolving a series of policy-driven political dramas, ranging from the faltering NHS reforms to Ken Clarke's sentencing proposals.

But one department that has not been making the slightest claim on the Prime Minister's political reserves in recent months is Michael Gove's. On schools, as the Education Secretary reminded us in a powerful speech on Monday, the Coalition has pursued a radical strategy with unwavering determination. No U-turns there.

In his address to Policy Exchange, a panoramic vision of the emerging landscape of academies and free schools, Gove rightly deplored the human cost - the "tragedy" - of substandard education. But he also warned of the "serious threat to our international competitiveness" represented by years of educational stagnation. As we wallow in the middle order of global rankings, the nations determined to claim the 21st century as their own surge ahead.

It should offend our sense of economic self-preservation, as well as our national pride, that the mathematical skills of Britain's 15-year-olds are now more than two academic years behind Chinese pupils of the same age.

In Singapore, four out of five teenagers achieve the equivalent of a "C" in both English and maths - compared to about half of British pupils. Britain is falling down the league tables in reading, science and mathematics, as the children of the East - especially China, Korea and Singapore - rise and rise.

The wars of the future will be wars of the mind: between fundamentalism and reason, of course, but also between the educated elites of each nation, competing as never before on an intellectual plane. Fifty years ago, the great threat came from Soviet missiles.

In 2011, it is to be found in the schools and colleges of the BRICs - nations such as Brazil, Russia, India and China, where economic development has become the defining characteristic of national destiny and education is powering ahead (albeit at different speeds in different countries) in the name of future prosperity.

The text-of-the-moment in Downing Street - cited in Gove's speech - is an article in June's issue of The Atlantic by Joel Klein, who was head of New York City's school system for eight years. Klein is writing about American neighbourhoods, but his experience - of vested interests, resistance to change, the power of the teacher unions and the absurd inflexibility of the education establishment - resonates deeply on this side of the Atlantic. The stakes, he concludes, could scarcely be higher: "Just as it was with [the motor industry in] Detroit, the global marketplace will be very unforgiving to a populace that doesn't have the skills it demands."

To Gove's credit, he grasps fully the need for school reforms that respond to the giddy pace of change: globalisation, technological innovation, and the unprecedented mobility of capital, labour and information. Properly implemented, the Coalition's education policy should be the most effective driver of social mobility since the devastation of the grammar school system. But - considered in geopolitical terms - the construction of a world-class state education system also has the potential, over time, to transform Britain's "soft power" on the world stage, and end the long era of state-sanctioned decline.

After Gove declared last week that the exam system was "discredited", his spokesman told The Spectator's James Forsyth: "Some don't like hearing it, tough. They'll find it more unpleasant in 10 years if we don't fix that system and they're working for Chinese billionaires who did maths at Harvard." That's exactly right - which is why Labour's deployment of the reverse gear on schools policy makes such a depressing contrast. Increasingly, after the blip of the Blair years, the party has reverted to type, seeing education through the prism of class and of the politics of envy.

In the new issue of Total Politics, Andy Burnham, the shadow education secretary, says that "I worry about [Gove's] elitist instincts he's got a plan for some schools and for some children, not for all." Worse, Burnham goes on to question the necessity of learning modern languages on the grounds that his constituents in Leigh, in Greater Manchester, are "not going to go on holiday [to France or Spain], they don't want to work there".

This, for a politician who claims to be on the side of aspiration, reflects an astonishingly tunnel-visioned, provincial view of the world. Why should pupils in Manchester be less equipped for the demands of the new global marketplace than children in London or, for that matter, Beijing?

Yet Burnham's remarks are entirely consistent with the present direction of Labour strategy - which is to fight "elitism", even where none exists. Ed Miliband has made the renewal of this battle a signifier of his break with New Labour: "We were intensely relaxed about what happened at the top of society. I say - no more." Even his elder brother, David, has called for independent schools to be stripped of charitable status - a "levelling down" proposal of the sort one hoped Labour had consigned to the dustbin of history along with Clause Four. Britain has the best private schools in the world. To attack them would be a form of national self-harm: like attacking Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal and believing, madly, that this vandalism would somehow improve our standing as a sporting nation.

In the 21st century, a country's educational strength will be as important as its defence capability. Its leaders - in politics, business, the arts, media - must be at ease in the new global elite: Davos-ready, if you like. Its strength in technological and conceptual innovation must be world class. It must cherish its best schools and colleges - state and private - and ensure that their best practice spreads across the land. There is an alternative, of course. But the equality of shared national decline is an equality not worth having.